http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-college05jun05,0,3651999.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

EDITORIAL

States join forces against electoral college:
A piecemeal approach may be the only way to kill the
anachronistic institution.
June 5, 2006, Los Angeles Times

A PROPOSED EXPERIMENT with majority rule has 
generated plenty of naysayers who apparently 
think that some nations are simply too immature 
to let people directly choose their own leaders. 
But we say the United States is ready for real
democracy.

The experiment is the National Popular Vote 
campaign, which intends to undermine the 
Constitution's anachronistic Electoral College. 
If the campaign succeeds, future presidents will 
take office only if they win the popular vote
nationwide.

The ingenious scheme was developed by John R. 
Koza, a Stanford professor who also invented the 
scratch-off lottery ticket. It calls on state 
legislatures to pass a measure dictating that all 
the electoral votes from that state go to the 
winner of the national popular vote. It goes into 
effect only if enough states approve it to 
represent a majority of the electoral votes. In 
other words, if states that represent at least 
270 of the 538 electoral votes all approve the 
measure, the winner of the popular vote 
nationwide would automatically win the 
presidency. It thus renders the Electoral College
moot without eliminating it.

This kind of end run is necessary because the 
only way to get rid of the Electoral College 
entirely is via a constitutional amendment, which 
would be nearly impossible to pass. Enough small 
states benefit from the current system to block 
an amendment. The beauty of this approach is that 
each state is constitutionally allowed to allot 
its electoral votes as it sees fit. The measure 
was approved by California's Assembly on Tuesday 
and is pending in four other states; backers hope 
to get it before all 50 states by January.

Anyone wondering why he should care about the 
Electoral College need look no further than the 
2000 election, when George W. Bush won the 
presidency despite getting about half a million 
fewer votes than Al Gore. If that makes 
conservatives think they should be thankful that 
the majority doesn't always rule in the United 
States, they should think again. The same thing 
nearly happened in reverse in 2004. If John Kerry 
had picked up a mere 60,000 more votes in Ohio, 
he would have won ÷ even though Bush took in 3
million more votes overall.

The Electoral College doesn't skew just election 
results; it skews elections. Candidates know they 
don't have to campaign in states that either 
clearly favor them or clearly don't; they have to 
focus only on swing states. In the 2004 campaign, 
Bush and Kerry spent a great deal of time 
brushing up on agricultural policy and other 
issues of vital concern in Iowa, while ignoring 
matters important to people in states such as
California, Texas and New York.

Opponents argue that the current system ensures 
that smaller states continue to have a say in 
setting national policy. But the U.S. Senate 
already gives Delaware every bit as much clout as 
California. Any method besides majority vote 
empowers some citizens at the expense of others 
and makes the president beholden to minority
interests.

At its inception, the United States was, well, a 
union of states. But it is now one nation, and 
our president should be elected by the citizens 
of that nation, not by its constituent states. To 
argue otherwise is to say that some Americans 
should have more power to elect a president than 
others simply because of where they live. 
Remember, all men are created equal. Including
Californians and New Yorkers.

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